“The telescope” is an exercise that allows a closer look at the asteroid. What questions are skeptics asking? Far from being annoyances, their concerns can serve to help us see the asteroid in more depth, dimension and accuracy. Remember that at the same time that people on your side of the aisle are more likely to see your asteroid, they’re also more likely to be blind to some of the critical details about it (read about morality binding us together and blinding us here). If you’re in the business of deflecting asteroids, an unflinching steely-eyed understanding of the asteroid is critical to getting the job done. In contrast, self-delusion very often ends badly.

“Unless the electreic car is driven A LOT, it will never get ahead environmentally.”

“The electric car might be great in a couple of decades but as a way to tackle global warming it does virtually nothing.”

The main complaint of climate change skeptics is not about climate change itself. In a word it is about scientism – the uncritical application of scientific or quasi-scientific methods – for the purpose of advancing a political agenda. It is about the fact that climate change has become a “sacred value” of the left in every sense of Haidt’s definiton of that term, including the “irrational commitment” part which, I submit, leads to the false conclusion that skeptics are deniers.
Climate change alamists need to listen more carefully to, and incorporate the lessons from, ALL the science, including views like those in the above referenced article, not just the parts of it that happen to fit the liberal grand narrative.

http://twitter.com/AsteroidsClub Asteroids Club

Agree that it is a sacred value on the left but at the same time factual evidence overwhelmingly supports their contention.

The Independent Whig

I am disappointed to see The Asteroids Club taking sides like this.

I thought “The Telescope” was the place to discuss the questions the skeptics are asking. I thought, “far from being annoyances, their concerns can serve to help us see the asteroid in more depth, dimension, and accuracy.” I thought “that at the same time people on [the asteroid’s] side of the aisle are more likely to see the asteroid; they’re also more likely to be blind to some of the critical details about it.”

Am I wrong about that? Is this not the place where people “let go of for and against” and listen to the other side with an open mind? If not here, then where?

I’m also disappointed that the response from The Asteroids Club seems to be an attempt to rebut a claim I did not make. I did not challenge factual evidence of climate change, nor did I challenge the contention of its proponents.

My point is that liberals are not listening carefully to the objections to the global warming movement. If they were, they’d realize that the objections are mostly about the proposed solutions and not so much about whether climate change is actually happening. The objections are also about the causes for it.

And more than that, given the known (presumably by members of The Asteroids Club) human tendency to circle the wagons around sacred values (and more generally all the lessons of The Righteous Mind), and given the fact that liberalism tends to never let a crisis go to waste as an opportunity to advance its agenda – an agenda which in many respects is antithetical to conservative sacred values – is it any wonder, are you really surprised, that conservatives use any and all arguments available to them to circle the wagons against the trampling their sacred values receive at the hands of liberal activists whose apparent main use of global warming is as a weapon, a tool, to do the trampling?

If liberals would listen more carefully then maybe they’d realize these things.

Maybe I’m a poor writer. Maybe I didn’t do a good job of conveying my ides. Maybe a comment from Buddy199 to an article called “Why Facts Don’t Matter” in Discover Magazine says it better:

“• One of the main reasons why conservatives are skeptical of the hyster-media, quasi-religious fervor and rigid group think of AGW proponents is the solution they offer:
Larger and more intrusive government, more regulations and of course more government spending and higher taxes.

To say that climate change is the latest vehicle that liberals have hitched their wagon to to advance their ideological agenda is far from fringe paranoia.

That said, is global warming a real scientific phenomenon? It does seem so. Is it primarily driven by human activity? No one can accurately quantify that until there is a more thorough understanding of the interaction of ocean currents, solar irradiance, cloud physics and other factors. Is global warming causing extreme weather? The objective scientific consensus is No. Should we completely upend our industrial society based on a theory that is far from fully fleshed out? Conservatives say no, liberals say yes.”

There’s overwhelming factual evidence that the liberal mantra about conservatives (e.g., anti-science, anti-“reason,” superstitious (i.e., religious), etc.) says more about liberal misunderstanding and misinterpretation of conservatives and conservatism than it does about what conservatives actually believe, care about, and mean when they talk or write. See D) below.

Paraphrasing Dr. Haidt; If liberals really want help deflecting their asteroids then they have to make a choice. They can either take the blue pill and stick to their comforting delusions about conservatives, or they can take the red pill, learn some moral psychology and step outside their moral matrix.

Unless and until the asteroid of global warming can be deflected without committing errors like these any request for help from conservatives in deflecting it amounts to a request that conservatives set aside their own values and “embrace progressive values.” (From the Discover Magazine article linked above.)
Put more simply, if liberals want conservatives to help deflect liberal asteroids then they should stop proposing solutions that, to conservatives, are just more asteroids.

==========

A) A few samples the overwhelming factual evidence that the left uses global warming to advance its agenda. Is some of this polemical? Certainly. Does some of it use language that might seem inflammatory to the left? Sure. Does any of that mean it doesn’t contain some valid points? Not at all.

This is a link to a page containing the transcript of Haidt’s original talk. Note the passages about Patrick Moynihan and Larry Summers and what happened to them when they dared to point out factual evidence that bucked the liberal party line. Haidt’s point is that the dearth of non-liberal thinkers in the social sciences is bad for science. Also available on the page are many other links to a wide range of commentary and research surrounding the issue of liberal bias against, and outright hostility and vitriol toward, non liberal ideas and those who propose them in academia and science.

In the spirit of this: “The telescope” is an exercise that allows a closer look at the asteroid. What questions are skeptics asking? Far from being annoyances, their concerns can serve to help us see the asteroid in more depth, dimension and accuracy.”

And if so, isn’t science hurt by the latter as much as it is by the former?

And if that is so, are the laws written and billion$ spent based on that “science” justified?

First and last paragraphs from article linked above:

“As Professor of Meteorology Dr. Richard Lindzen at MIT’s Department of Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences observed, “The latest IPCC report truly sank to the level of hilarious incoherence – it is quite amazing to see the contortions the IPCC has to go through in order to keep the international climate agenda going.”

“it’s way past time to come to terms with a true climate crisis, one where political agenda-driven liars, statistical manipulators and demagogues are permitted to misrepresent facts without vociferous challenges from the science community they purport to represent. That’s a terribly costly man-made disaster that has absolutely no excuse.”

And, by virtue of the left’s inherent McCarthyism and its overt attempts to purge those who are skeptical of the liberal faith (e.g., French Revolution, Brandies, Rutgers, Mozilla), thgis arguably happens more so on the left.

The left has little hope of recruiting the right in its efforts to deflect this asteroid unless and until it stops its McCarthyism and lives up to its ideal of openness by WELCOMING the skepticism that is rightfully part of the science, and the scientific process, it supposedly cherishes.

Jennifer Johnson

Why has their been no warming for 18 years?

https://www.facebook.com/david.rogers.hunt David_Rogers_Hunt

It is way past time to use Wikia technology to debate this issue in a new public forum that would be more open ended, complete, and nuanced than it has ever been previously possible to debate such issues.

We need to find forums where pundits can talk TO each other, rather than merely AT each other.